Enjoy your day off, workers
by digby
It’s very nice of our overlords to give us our little day. But that’s the least they can do. For a country that prides itself on “The American Dream” and being a land of both freedom and equality, we seem to be going in the wrong direction …
The United States is no longer more equal than European nations, but actually deeply more unequal. The chart below shows that the United States has the most unequal distribution of the wealth of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member country examined. Across the OECD, the bottom 60 percent own about 13.3 percent of the wealth. (The bottom 40 percent own only 3.3 percent.) In Canada, the bottom 60 percent own 12.5 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 40 percent own 2.2 percent. In France, the respective numbers are 11.6 percent and 1.8 percent. And in Britain, they are 16 percent and 4.7 percent.
In the United States, however, the bottom 60 percent own a mere 2.5 percent of the wealth and the bottom 40% own negative 0.4 percent of the wealth.
The piece goes on to point out that the US also depends upon employers to provide most benefits at the same time that the work force is becoming more and more freelance which means they have no benefits. And even more interesting is the fact that most of those freelancers are doing jobs to make the lives of the wealthy easier — in other words are working as servants of one kind or another.
Does any of this sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. The servant economy is upon us.
But today we have our little day. Here is Southern California the sun is shining brightly and it looks like it’s going to be a hot day at the beach. So enjoy it. Then back to work.
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